Sicilian Novelist Andrea Camilleri - Popmatters

"Father of Montalbano", Sicilian Novelist Andrea Camilleri - PopMatters // BOOKS Farewell to the "Father of Montalbano", Sicilian Novelist Andrea Camilleri BY GEORGE DE STEFANO //22 Jul 2019 Poster excerpt, Montalbano and Me (2014) (IMDB) The beloved character Salvo Montalbano, like its author, the late Sicilian novelist Andrea Camilleri ("il padre di Montalbano"), can be brusque and ornery, but he has a strong ethical code and passionate commitment to justice. https://www.popmatters.com/andrea-camilleri-father-of-montalbano-2639276470.html[7/22/2019 4:02:15 PM] "Father of Montalbano", Sicilian Novelist Andrea Camilleri - PopMatters Fame came late to Andrea Camilleri, the Sicilian author who died 17 July in Rome at the age of 93. He was 68 when he published the first of a series of mystery novels featuring Salvo Montalbano, the commissario (chief of detectives) in Vigàta, a fictional town in western Sicily. But, beginning with La forma dell'acqua (The Shape of Water) in 1994, the novels became bestsellers in Italy and then internationally. Stephen Sartarelli, Camilleri's English-language translator, renders them from the author's Sicilian-inflected Italian into an idiom that often reads like Italian-American Brooklynese yet preserves the author's lean style and ironic voice and wit. (To date, 26 of the novels have been published in English.) The books have a fervent following not only among Italian and Anglophone readers; they have been translated into some 30 languages. Five years after the first Montalbano novel came out in Italy, RAI, the national public broadcasting company, began to produce a series of television movie adaptations. Directed by Alberto Sironi, they star Roman actor Luca Zingaretti as the Sicilian detective and are filmed on location in Sicily, mainly in the province of Ragusa. Twenty years later, the series is still going strong on RAI, with each new episode attracting millions of viewers. The films have been sold to 20 countries; all 34 episodes to date are available in English-subtitled versions from the US-based network, MHz. The films were so popular that in 2012, RAI developed a prequel series, "Il Giovane Montalbano" (The Young Montalbano), based on Camilleri's short stories about the detective's early years. Its two seasons aired to date also can be seen on MHz. There's no mystery about the international popularity of the Montalbano novels: they are entertaining, ingeniously plotted, and highly addictive page-turners. But setting and characterization are as important, if not more so, than story. Camilleri brings his readers into a fully imagined world, that of contemporary Sicily, with its beguiling mix of tradition and up to the minute modernity. His characters are comic types, like figures in commedia dell'arte, yet they also are fully developed, idiosyncratic and memorable. Besides the inspector himself, they include his closest associates, the detectives Domenico "Mimì" Augello and Giuseppe Fazio; the syntax-mangling, idiot savant cop Catarella; the police bureaucrats Alderighi-Bonetti and Dr. Lattes; and the hilariously rude, profane, and cannoli-loving coroner Dr. Pasquano. The secondary characters represent a broad swath of Sicilian society, from poor and working class to aristocrats, law-abiding and criminal. https://www.popmatters.com/andrea-camilleri-father-of-montalbano-2639276470.html[7/22/2019 4:02:15 PM] "Father of Montalbano", Sicilian Novelist Andrea Camilleri - PopMatters Although the world of Montalbano is mostly male, there are important recurring women characters— his longtime, and long-suffering fiancée Livia Burlando, from Genoa, whom he often consults about his cases (she knows Sicily well yet has an outsider's objectivity); his housekeeper Adelina, a maestra of Sicilian cooking; and Ingrid Sjostrom, a Swedish friend of Livia's who married a Sicilian and lives in Vigàta. And, as in detective fiction generally, women play prominent roles as victims and perpetrators of crime. Montalbano shares a number of attributes with his creator. The chief of detectives in Vigàta, which is modeled on Camilleri's hometown of Porto Empedocle, is, like the author was, an unrepentant smoker, an ardent gourmand, an atheist and, surprisingly for a police official, a left-winger. In one novel, Montalbano furiously denounces the police who savagely attacked protestors at the 2001 G-8 summit in Genoa. In another, one of his underlings wonders whether his boss is a communist. Camilleri was a lifelong man of the Left; he had been a member of the Italian Communist Party and he often supported left-wing causes. He loathed and denounced former premier Silvio Berlusconi, and during his last months, he spoke out against Italy's far-right government and its leader, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini. Camilleri, who grew up under Fascism, said that Salvini "reminds me of a member of the fascist regime." ("Andrea Camilleri, beloved creator of Inspector Montalbano, dies aged 93", Alison Flood, Angela Giuffrida, The Guardian, 17 Jul 2019) He was particularly offended by the inhumanity of the government's anti-immigrant polices. In the 2016 novel The Other End of the Line, Montalbano assists desperate refugees arriving at Vigàta's port. When RAI broadcast the movie adaptation in 2018, outraged government supporters denounced Camilleri and the broadcaster. While Camilleri was on life support in the hospital after a heart attack, Italian right-wingers gloated, with one expressing the belief that he should be buried in the sea with his beloved migrants. Salvo Montalbano can be brusque and ornery, but he has a strong ethical code and passionate commitment to justice. He is outraged by the abuses committed by the powerful: corrupt businessmen, Mafiosi, and shady politicians. In the books, as in real life, those three forces are often in collusion, to https://www.popmatters.com/andrea-camilleri-father-of-montalbano-2639276470.html[7/22/2019 4:02:15 PM] "Father of Montalbano", Sicilian Novelist Andrea Camilleri - PopMatters the detriment of honest and endlessly put-upon Sicilians. The Catholic Church and its leaders didn't escape Camilleri's sharp, satirical eye, either; the author frequently skewered clerical pomposity and arrogance. Camilleri said that the Montalbano books were inspired by actual crimes he learned about from newspapers or television and later novels in the series centered on international arms and drug trafficking, terrorism, and the plight of immigrants in Italy. Food —cucina siciliana— is another element integral to the popularity of the Montalbano stories. The novels have introduced readers to some of the most glorious creations of Sicilian gastronomy: pasta ncasciata, a rich, baked dish of macaroni, meat, sauce, and cheese; arancini (filled and fried rice balls), roasted red mullets; typical cheeses like tuma and primosale; pasta with sardines, or with eggplant, or anchovies. When the detective isn't working on a case, he's often eating, whether the cooking of his housekeeper Adelina or the seafood at his friend Enzo's trattoria. After consuming one of Enzo's multi-course repasts, Montalbano likes to walk from the restaurant to a jetty, where he sits gazing at the sea while puzzling over the details of whatever crime he is investigating. Digestion and ratiocination are inseparable for this detective. Camilleri, notwithstanding the celebrity and income Montalbano brought him, had an ambivalent relationship with his fictional creation. Known affectionately as "il padre di Montalbano" (Montalbano's father), he preferred to be remembered for his historical novels, fictional accounts based on real incidents and characters. (There are eight, five in English translation.) He published the first, Hunting Season, in 1992; it was a best-seller in Italy but it took the success of the Montalbano series for it to attract attention outside the country. Reading these novels, most of which are set in 19th century Sicily, you can't help but think, this is the history that produced the world Montalbano lives in. One of the best, La setta degli angeli (The Sect of Angels, 2011), is based on an actual scandal, the sexual abuse of young girls and women by Catholic priests in a small town early in the 20th century. The author once described Salvo Montalbano as a "serial killer of characters" because he had developed a life of his own and demanded so much attention from the author that Camilleri could https://www.popmatters.com/andrea-camilleri-father-of-montalbano-2639276470.html[7/22/2019 4:02:15 PM] "Father of Montalbano", Sicilian Novelist Andrea Camilleri - PopMatters barely find the time to write other books with different protagonists. He complained— ironically— that he had to keep writing the Montalbano novels just to appease the demanding detective. Once he had finished another one, Montalbano graciously allowed him to pursue other literary interests. There's a delightful meta-moment in one of the later novels in which Montalbano channels his creator's exasperation. The detective's girlfriend Livia wants to take a day trip to the town of Ragusa Ibla. Montalbano balks; the city is used as the primary location for "those TV movies about me" and he wants to avoid the hubbub of the shooting and the crowds that inevitably gather. (There are popular Montalbano tours of the city and other nearby locations where the films are shot.) Just as irritating, he says, is the fact that he has a full head of hair and the actor who plays him—Luca Zingaretti, whose name Montalbano mispronounces—is bald. In 2009, Zingaretti and members of the RAI creative team came to New York for a screening of what was then the newest film, "La Luna di Carta" (Paper Moon). During a Q&A after the film, he praised the literary qualities of Camilleri's books, adding that he was certain such great postwar Italian auteurs as Elio Petri and Francesco Rosi would have adapted them for the screen.

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